High Guardian Spice

I'm not seeing what "diversity" they're getting at.

If they're talking about ethnicities, then it seems on the same league as RWBY. As in, everyone's Mukokuseki. Body size? Also not seeing it besides one character looking like a stocky dwarf (?). LGBTQ or disabled characters? No one knows since we know nothing about the cartoon.

The only thing vaguely 'diverse' is that everyone is a girl... But so does just about every other "girl cartoon".

You are so awesome.

Well I don't think Mukokeseki works here exactly, and the body types do seem a bit varied compared to RWBY where most of the main characters are slender teenage girls. The show's created by a trans man so I somewhat doubt it won't have LGBT representation and themes somewhere, and while I can't find it now I recall an article somewhere describing at least 1 of the main characters being non-binary or something.

(2 3)

Both shows are about a cast of 4 female students who go to a high school where they're trained to be magical warriors and we follow their wacky adventures. RWBY of course having developed into a more serious, dramatic story - but the premise is similar.

Edited by Soble on Aug 20th 2019 at 6:21:53 AM

The show’s creator flat out said there would be trans characters played by transgender actors. Of course that actually banks on the show coming out. The Crunchyroll Expo is in two weeks and HGS is MIA.

Most of the characters seem racially ambiguous to me. The fantasy setting blurs it more.

I just want news on this show already. Can they release a clip? It looks promising but it's hard to talk about it, especially positively, when we know the bare minimum about it.

I guess all the backlash might have had something to do with it. Unfortunate.

Problems with the advertising aside I find shows with cute art styles like this, and backgrounds involving some ambitious creator getting to upgrade their comic/story to a series/feature film hard to resist.

I’ve noted it before, but backlash occurs to shows like this all the time, especially at Crunchyroll where their two biggest hits last year had controversies in Goblin Slayer and Shield Hero. Usually it’s just brushed off.

The complete and massive restructuring of a company in AT&T Time Warner? Not so much. Especially when the goal of the structuring was to eliminate Time Warner’s notorious intra-company rivalries (which the former management encouraged) in favor of streamlining the content and reducing redundancy. If Time Warner has their thumbs in several animation studios, do they need Ellation? They may have declared the output redundant and wanted Crunchyroll to focus on financing stuff from existing studios. And HGS may have gotten lost in the cracks, not because of backlash from the internet, but a corporation deciding the numbers didn’t add up.

TimeWarner is WarnerMedia now, since June 2018 it's like that.

Right, Warner Media. My bad.

Anyway, it’s been one year since the announcement trailer, and there has been no sign of the series. In comparison to another show that had a backlash to its announcement, Thundercats Roar, that show released some promotional material at Comic Con and is still earmarked for a fall airing on Canadian broadcasters. We have nothing here, and whether that just means delays, a Retool, or something else (apparently several members of the staff list their work on the show in the past tense on their resumes) bought about by the WarnerMedia restructuring, something has happened to the show unforeseen when it originally was announced.

Apologies for the double post, but Crunchyroll Expo is happening over the weekend, and not only is High Guardian Spice still MIA, but Ellation, the animation studio Crunchyroll founded, according to my brief research is now regarded as the corporate oversight for all of Otter Media’s various animation related divisions (Crunchyroll, VRV, and Rooster Teeth). Job openings for the company, specifically a senior IP acquisition position are listed on their website and that mentions working with an LA studio, but the social media presence of said studio is nonexistent (outside of an animator claiming to have done work for an untitled project for them back in April).

So long story short, not only is High Guardian Spice nowhere to be found outside of its initial trailer and a creator promising it will happen, the actual studio has gone missing in action as well, or maybe it’s just laying low until there’s more to be said about its products.

Edited by Beatman1 on Aug 31st 2019 at 1:37:13 PM

This is beginning to look more and more like a scam.

Eh, "scam" is harsh. There are a million productions that get stuck in Development Hell and never get made. The only thing weird is why this one got so much advance attention.

This. I doubt it was a scam, but the recent shakeups mentioned likely had a major impact. The other big one I might think is the stuff mentioned about some of Crunchy's more controversial shows(G. Slayer, Shiekd Hero)took the wind out of its sails along with them likely having gotten a lot of push to drown out the initial "controversy" the show caused.

After no-showing Crunchyroll Expo 2019 (where the biggest news was two more seasons of The Rising Of The Shield Hero), we actually got some news off of Twitter.

First was that the composer Catherine Joy said she was wrapping up the first season’s soundtrack by Sunday. (Ms. Joy had tweeted doing music work for the show prior as well).

Second, but admittedly less trustworthy is a few people online claiming to have seen the pilot as part of a Crunchyroll feedback campaign. Apparently the pilot will be an hour.

IT LIVES!

So it does,surprise!

Well, time to wait for it having its own trailer and show off.

Edited by Blueace on Feb 25th 2020 at 3:36:14 PM

I saw this trailer that shows just a TINY bit more of footage...and its really cool.

Crunchyroll is really pushing The God Of High School and Tower of God as their big action shows. HGS meanwhile seems to be advertised as “oh this is here too.”

It seems like a niche shojo-ish story. Crunchyroll makes post of its viewing on shonen action anime.

x2: That seems to be the general impression for the 5 other shows compared to those two.

Onyx Equinox and FreakAngels are two more Western-pitched series in the batch, so that's neat.

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Feb 25th 2020 at 7:28:36 AM

I already read the Freakangels webcomic, so I'm plenty worried that the cartoon is going to change things for the worse.

On-topic, this looks okay. I still don't know enough about it to even come close to making a judgement on story quality, but it looks decent.

It's definitely is at least still in development from the looks of it. Honestly most of the complaints against it boil down to "It's American and vaguely progressive! Burn it!", but that said it kinda looks a little generic to me, personally. I wasn't really all that into RWBY either for similar reasons, though aesthetically at least the shows are very different. RWBY has more of a Final Fantasy JRPG Tech-Meets-Fantasy kinda feel, whereas HGS looks a lot more Generic Fantasy Magical Girl.

Actually aesthetically I would more compare it to a brighter, happier looking The Owl House, both have sorta an anime influenced art style and a heavy focus on witches in particular.

What's so progressive about having an all-girl group of witches? That's practically every Magical Girl work ever.

Having a diverse range of skin tones and body types with at least one confirmed LGBT character could be described as somewhat progressive. What I don't understand is why people are mad that it's somewhat progressive.